My journey from Eastern Europe to California was great…until I got to California.

Los Angeles border security (not the agents but the “greeters”) are idiots.

2 hours for citizens?

Then:

Southwest lost my bags on a one-hour hopper flight (that left early!). Then the independent and empowered woman at the customer service counter decided to ignore me and address my girl when I triggered her (all I wanted to know was if they’d reimburse $50 if I went and bought a couple necessities).

Answer = no.

Not the money, it’s principle.
Anyways, before this turns into a woe-is-me message, I speaketh of this simply because the one thing I’ve always preferred about the US is the fact that the customer service is superior to Eastern Europe.

But now:

is that changing?

I don’t know. Mr. Grinchly Trouble is a bit perturbed by the situation. Seems America is hell bent on returning to Communism, and i can tell you from first-hand experiences – those commy-cuntries are sure as hell not built on customer service.

The truth is this:

You might, at one point or another, want that option to “escape”. When I landed in LA last night it felt far more third-world than most of the countries I’ve been this year.

When I was in my early 20s, I always heard from older guys that your physical fitness levels fall off at 25. That you start getting more aches, more pains, and taking longer to recover. They were all very adamant about that specific age:

25.

And it’s funny, because now that I’ve passed that threshold, the only thing I hear is, “You’re still so young! You shouldn’t be slowing down!”

It makes me chuckle, because i’m sure I’ll be doing the same shit to young guns when I’m older too. Nonetheless, I think that as men, we have an inclanation to always try to re-live the glory days. Giving an arbitrary number to someone as a specific time only works as long as they don’t exceed that time. When they do, that number is raised to fit our model of how we used to see ourselves.

Anyways:

The truth is, I am slowly but surely slowing down.

I don’t recover as well as I used to. The days of being able to play basketball for three hours a day plus lift weights 5 days a week are gone. The weeks of training for triathlons (biking 250 miles, running 50, swimming a half dozen) are gone. I think my eyesight is getting worse by the day.

They won’t come back and I won’t live in the past, trying to wish for what was and what will never become again.

Instead, I’ve tried to take anti-aging measures early.

Weight lifting has become a strategic thing with proper recovery time.

Stretching (yoga) often is helpful.

Cut the drinking down quite a bit – hard to do when Europe is still pretty new and all you really want to do is party.

The sitting at a desk style of living will kill you.

Within two days of starting it, you’ll noticeably start feeling worse. You’ll become a hunchback. Stiff. Sluggish in your movements. The human body was not meant to sit in front of a desk with florescent lights.

This is why freedom is so important.

To be able to set your own hours. To have a standing desk if it helps your posture. To work in a new coffee shop, outside, instead of being stuck in the same florescent light hellhole that is killing people in far greater numbers than AIDS ever did.

I feel signifcantly better physically than I ever did when I was working a 9-5, and you can achieve the same thing with Pro Niche Site:

It was December of 2015. I’d just returned from my trip to Colombia, and my mind was made up.

I’d be moving abroad in February 2016. I knew it, my family knew it, and the plans were in motion…

The only people who didn’t know about my plan?

Everyone I worked with.

And while I didn’t tell them until February, something happened in December that really put the nail in the coffin. It drove that nail even deeper, and it really didn’t need any additional push to begin with.

So what happened?

Well, the company was having one of those dreaded holiday parties that everybody has to pretend to like but everybody fucking hates.

You know exactly what I’m talking about.

Even more additional time with the boss who you can’t stand, the annoying HR bitch who won’t stop yapping, and even more additional time complaining about work with the very people you want to get away from!

The bright side of most of these parties (if you can call them that), is that the company at least usually feeds you. And, if you’re really lucky, they might even liquor you up a bit too.

The December 2015 Christmas party for me was not that at all.

When the announcement went out that year, my boss told his team (ie me and colleagues) that it was highly “recommended” that we attend the party…but that we would have to pay our own way.

HA.

$7.

It wasn’t the money, but the principle. The company directly told us that *we were not worth $7 to them*.

(And there wasn’t any booze there, either…)

It was made abundantly clear that we’d be in trouble if we didn’t attend, but that we had to pay to attend the company holiday party. I distinctly remember thinking, “Well, even if I flop as an entrepreneur…it’s better than this shit.”

So keep that in mind this holiday season.

If you work for a big corporation, they don’t give much of a damn about you no matter how many memos they send out about “employee health” and “benefits”.

And one more thing:

Just know that you’re not alone. You’re one of thousands, if not millions, who feel this exact way. And you’re not alone in wanting to carve your own path in life, devoid of the corporate shackles.

To begin carving your own path, watch the six free videos I’ve created about starting a small online business:

LaVar Ball is obnoxious, arrogant, and annoying. And recently, I’d say stupid – for sending his California-grown-and-spoiled children to play in the middle of nowhere in Lithuania.

If you don’t know who he is, he’s got 3 sons aged between 16-20, two of whom have professional NBA potential, and he’s been all over ESPN/Yahoo/every sports site imaginable for months now. He’s mostly got all this attention from shit-talking and not backing down.

But he’s also a genius. Not in the sense of pulling his kids out of school, but purely from a marketing sense (and that’s all we’re talking about today – how you can use it to profit too).

Here’s why:

The sneaker game has been changed now for professional athletes. He might totally fail at making the Ball shoe brand big, but even if he does, the game has been CHANGED.

Can you imagine if a person like LeBron had said “shove it” to Nike and built his own brand? What if he’d cut out the middle man, taken an even bigger cut of the profits, and had full ownership and everything?

That’s a lotta money.

So even if LaVar flops, he will have a lasting impact on the professional sports shoe market for years to come. That’s something you can’t take away from him, no matter what happens in the coming years.

I just hope his kids don’t freeze to death in Lithuania.

One more thing, it’s important.

This weekend I’ll be doing a quick little opening for something. I’ll give more details about it in the coming days.

But for now:

I’ve actually been to Lithuania, and did a video last year with some thoughts on it from my tiny little studio apartment

There’s a certain region of the world that keeps coming across my desk. And it’s one that I’d NEVER even considered visiting, much less spending any significant time there.

I speak of Scandinavia.

The first time I ever “went” to Scandinavia was the Copenhagen (Denmark) airport. I was on my way to Budapest with my friend Jeremy. We’d flown on Norwegian air from Los Angeles to Copenhagen, and were then heading onwards to Budapest.

Or maybe we were going back from Budapest and were in the Oslo airport. I can’t remember. I drank a lot on that trip, okay? Try not to judge me too much…

We were hungry.

Now, I knew how expensive things were in this region of the world. But in Jeremy’s case, he didn’t. And the hunger got the best of him.

So he got a hamburger and a beer.

I’ll never forget when he came back to the table and showed me his receipt. It was in Danish Krones. He said to me, “Hey man, my phone isn’t working – can you look up how much this burger and beer was in US dollars?”

I punched in the number of Danish Krones (~300) into my phone, and the US dollar equilvalent was…

$47.

Again, for a burger and a beer. Let me remind you that you can buy a McDonald’s cheeseburger for $1 and a Coors Light at the gas station for $1.

But people keep trying to change my mind about Scandinavia, including the latest guest of the Dating Abroad Podcast.

PS: As mentioned last week, this show will likely go to a slightly premium model (~$10/m for two premium episodes, transcriptions, and a very premium newsletter) next year. This email was actually swiped from a draft of one section of the newsletter, so it’s a great preview of what you’ll be getting.

Most countries in EE have some sort of local site, if you can manage to find it and translate it, it’s a goldmine. The Cupid Media sites worked well too (Ukraine Date, Russian Cupid, Colombian Cupid, etc.) for me. These are all country-specific.

Q: Was the LA job where you had absurd amounts of free time (bored out of your mind) and were making just under 6 figures #5 or #6?

A: Yep, that was it. I actually loved the company I worked with in San Diego (pretty prestigious Japanese co). The one in LA was a joke (government thinktank…you know how good ‘ol gov works).

​Q (well, a comment): You’re one of the rare people that I keep reading from time to time and that I am not unsubscribed of the newsletter, that I started following a few years ago when the manosphere was more active at the time.

I must admit you’ve come a long way and there certainly can be noticed the change in the way that you’re speaking/writing. Not that it wasn’t true at the time, and it still holds its truth, but now it seems like it’s way more refined.

Apparently, it’s an actual song by an actual band – coined the “Fast Food Rockers”. For my whole life, I just thought it was some random rhyme they taught us in school.

Boy was I wrong.

Now today, I want to talk about influence.

Recently, in my not-so-off-the-grid Eastern European home, a couple of Pizza Huts just opened up. Prior to that, we actually did not have any American pizza chains. No Domino’s, Pizza Hut, or anything of the sort.

(There are way too many KFCs already)

Now there are a couple of Pizza Hut Expresses in a couple of malls, and every time I’ve been by one, to say they’ve been PACKED would be an understatement.

People are flocking to shitty Pizza Hut Express to eat a week’s worth of grease in one sitting.

Do you want to know why?

Because they’re just being told to. The marketing machine and potential of American companies is far superior to anything that an Eastern European pizza chain can put out. In fact, I’ve never seen seen a sign for the biggest one here. You just run into them randomly.

But not Pizza Hut. People are lining up for that like crack addicts line the street.

This is no joke.

It just goes to show how EASY it is to influence people into everything. Especially average people (aka not this email list) who are so plugged in that they can be convinced that Pizza Hut is quality pizza.

That’s why making money online is really not that difficult.

People can be influenced into anything. Hell, just recently I saw a “pee valve” being sold to women. It allows them to piss like a man.

It was probably $0.10 worth of plastic, and being sold for over $8.

And it was probably selling more quantity in plastic peni than than Pizza Hut Express is selling pizza.

You’re telling me Pizza Hut can convince people it’s quality and have a line out the door, but that you can’t make a couple of affiliate sales with a website?

I find that highly unlikely 🙂

Now, let’s discuss something.

The trick is to know where to START and not spend time floundering around listening to the wrong folks. That’s why I created the six completely *free* videos to introduce Pro Niche Site (closed for the year).

To help you become a mini Pizza Hut. To help you get off the ground and create a huge demand for whatever it is you choose to sell.

To watch those six free videos, just go here and enter ‘yer best mailing address:

I get asked, often, about how viable teaching English is as an option to “get abroad quick”.

I also often get asked, often, if I’m an English teacher when I meet new people – it’s just the assumption to make when meeting a native speaker. The look on their face when I tell them what I do (and how much I make, it’s always asked right after…) is priceless.

So here’s the dealio:

I have a friend who teaches English, and I’m going to use him as a guideline. He also is on this email list, so I’m hoping I don’t muck any of this up.

At an Eastern European capital city, English teachers should expect to make about $1,000 a month, give or take. This is for about 20-25 hour a week of lessons + lesson planning.

Now, this is the important part:

That $1,000 a month does NOT include summer months.

It is NOT $12,000 a year averaged over 12 months, but more like $1,000 a month except for the months that school isn’t in session…3 months a year.

It’s $9,000 a year averaged over 12 months. Which is only $750/m.

Now, this is easily supplemented by doing some private tutoring on the side, but that’s certainly not passive income. You’re having to actively work to get that work, then actually do the work.

Can you imagine that?

Moving to a foreign country, full of excitement. Then you get there and your yearly income is slashed by 25% before you even begin a day of work.

Now, my friend is a bit higher up the totem pole, and teaches harder topics than basic English, but that’s exceptional – not the norm.

Certainly, if you’re not set on Europe, there are better options in other parts of the world:

I hear that the Mid-East, if that’s your thing, pays $5,000 a month.

Developed Asian countries pay in the $2,000-$3,000 range. Keep in mind, this is developed countries. Think Japan or maybe Korea. Not a place in Southeast Asia where the girls will throw themselves at you.

Speaking of:

One other perk my friend mentions?

Being in the position of power with the students…we all know how girls like older guys. Add in the authority, plus the foreign-ness – winning combination.

Of course, if you don’t have the game to pull it off and get fired, you’ll go from $750 a month to nothing.

You best lock that student down and get her so addicted to you, that you’d never have to worry about the headmaster stopping by to put an end to your Eng-pregnating power.